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In 1912, Lawrence banker Jabez B. Watkins (1845-1921) built the three-story, 26-room house, designed by W.J. Mitchell, for himself and his wife, Elizabeth Miller Watkins. She lived in the home until her death in 1939, bequeathing it to the university as a chancellor’s residence. It replaced the original brick chancellor’s residence at 1345 Louisiana St.

Chancellor Deane W. Malott and his family were the first to live in the home. The first floor is used for receptions and other public functions; the upper stories are family living quarters.

Opened in 1966 as a freshman women’s hall, it is named for the first chancellor, R.W. Oliver, in honor of the university’s centennial. It now houses men and women, coed by wing, in two-person or private rooms.

The 22,000-square-foot South Dining Commons links Oliver Hall with the new Cora Downs Residence Hall, which opened in fall 2017 to the west. Oliver Hall's former dining hall has been renovated as an academic commons.

(Naismith Hall, across Naismith Drive east of Oliver, is a private residence hall for men and women.)

The bronze medallion of this marker, 16.5 inches in diameter, bears the image of a conestoga wagon pulled by oxen and guided by a pioneer.

The work of sculptors J.E. and L.G. Fraser, it is mounted outside Lindley Hall on a limestone plinth about 4 feet tall and nearly 6 feet long. The whole is surrounded by a low ovoid stone wall; plantings and a flagpole complete the marker.

The southern of two five-story, freshman-focused residence halls designed by Treanor Architects of Lawrence, Oswald houses men and women in single-, two- and four-person suites; it is part of a quadrangle with Self, Templin, Lewis, Ellsworth, and Hashinger halls.

The inscription on the Spooner Hall portico reads: “Whoso findeth wisdom findeth life,” and a sandstone owl, the symbol of wisdom, sits in a niche on the gable.

The owl may have been designed by the Spooner architect, Henry van Brunt (1832-1903), a partner in the Kansas City, Mo., firm of Van Brunt & Howe. He was an 1854 graduate of Harvard University and a student of Richard Morris Hunt, the most notable American proponent of the Gothic Revival and Renaissance Revival styles.